Providing information, education, and training to build knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes that will lead to increased independence, productivity, self determination, integration and inclusion (IPSII) for people with developmental disabilities and their families.

Survey: Most Dutch Doctors Would Kill Children In Some
Cases
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
May 18,
2005

ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS--A majority of Dutch doctors surveyed
recently said they would administer a lethal injection or potentially lethal
dose of a drug to children in certain circumstances, if the law allowed it.

For a study released in the May edition of the Journal of Pediatrics,
researchers interviewed pediatricians, general practitioners, and clinical
specialists. When posed with the hypothetical situation of a child with
incurable cancer, up to 60 percent said they would use lethal injections if the
child requested it and the parents agreed. In situations where the parents
requested euthanasia for an unconscious child, up to 42 percent of the doctors
said they would end the child's life. Further, if the child wanted to die, and
the parents did not agree, up to 28 percent of the doctors said they would
honor the child's wishes.

The study may not be particularly surprising, in light of other recent
studies on euthanasia performed on children in the Netherlands.

The report comes three months after a separate study, published in
February's Dutch Journal of Medicine, found that at least 22 newborns in the
Netherlands had been killed because of their disabilities since 1997. In a
Dutch study published in March's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine
doctors revealed that over the past seven years up to 20 newborns with
disabilities had been killed each year in the Netherlands, but that most are
not reported to authorities.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal for children under age 12 in
the Netherlands. Some doctors are pushing for a law that would change that so
that doctors who choose to kill children in certain situations would be
protected.

Many disability rights groups oppose efforts to make such "mercy
killing" legal. They argue that doctors should not be allowed to kill based on
their predictions or judgments of what a person's quality of life might become,
and that doing so puts children and adults with disabilities in a more
vulnerable position.

"There's this sense of 'We just want it to be over,' which means that
these kids can be shuffled off early," Stephen Drake, research analyst at the
Chicago-based disability rights group Not Dead Yet, told Health Day News in
response to the most recent study.

"The literature that looks at children who have disabilities, or those
who are dying, finds that they are very sensitive and aware of what their
families are going through," Drake said. "So, how much of a child's desire to
die -- whether that child has a disability or an illness -- is based on
overhearing the sighs outside the bedroom door of 'I can't take any more of
this' from parents?"

The GCDD is funded under the provisions of P.L. 106-402. The federal law also provides funding to the Minnesota Disability Law Center,the state Protection and Advocacy System, and to the Institute on Community Integration, the state University Center for Excellence. The Minnesota network of programs works to increase the IPSII of people with developmental disabilities and families into community life.